


The Daybreak Butcher

by FeoplePeel



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Canon, Established Relationship, F/M, Journalism, Mild Horror, Minor Character Death, True Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 03:36:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17072768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeoplePeel/pseuds/FeoplePeel
Summary: I don’t know what you were hoping to read. To be honest, I thought about titling this piece:The Fade Murders, You Don’t Know What Happened…but my editor thought that might be a little off-putting. Besides, you already know that there’s something the Viscount, the Chantry, the Guard isn’t telling you.Isn’t that why you picked up this paper?[A Report of the Fade Murders by Varric Tethras, corroborated by Hawke Investigations]





	The Daybreak Butcher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneshallop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneshallop/gifts).



> Many thanks to [Liz](http://goddamnrey.tumblr.com/) for betaing!

_The Daybreak Butcher_

_Varric Tethras_

If you read nothing else, I wish you only to know this: the woman they have in prison, accused for the murders of thirteen men, women, and children, is _not_ the Daybreak Butcher.

I don’t know what you were hoping to read. To be honest, I thought about titling this piece: _The Fade Murders, You Don’t Know What Happened_ …but my editor thought that might be a little off-putting. Besides, you already know that there’s something the Viscount, the Chantry, the Guard isn’t telling you.

Isn’t that why you picked up this paper?

To tell this story, I’m going to take you back thirty-six years, to the day I was born.

You all know Kirkwall, but you don’t know the Kirkwall my parents knew. And I’m not sure that I can do justice to the city that two dwarves saw, fresh from losing everything they knew in Orzammar. It was freedom that hated them, and it was dirty and big, and they hated it too just a little bit.

This was entirely different to the Kirkwall as Leandra Amell knew it. Leandra Amell was the daughter of a noble family at the time of my parent's arrival in Kirkwall and, unbeknownst to me, the mother of my future best friend, my wife. Leandra was considered kind by those I’ve spoken to who knew her in her youth. A little outspoken, though not as wild as her brother. The _responsible_ one of the children, for as much as she disagreed with her father. Later, she became more widely known as the Amell who ran off with a mage.

You all know her, now, as the first in a series of crimes known as the Fade Murders.

The _real_ story starts twelve years ago, when a woman came to me with an account I couldn't believe, so I won't blame you for not believing it either. But...stick with me.

The Kirkwall that Leandra Amell, now Leandra _Hawke_ ’s daughter, Marian, arrived to, was something similar to the experience of my parents: big, dirty, nothing noble to speak of. She tells me now that she loved it, still loves it, despite everything. We’re similar in that regard.

 **Varric Tethras:** Hawke, what do you remember about the day we met?

 **Marian Hawke:** The first day, before the investigation? [Laughs] I was a mess. My mother had just died, you know? And no one knew it was a murder yet. Everyone was telling me she’d died in her sleep, like some old woman. A heart attack or, I think someone said suicide? Some fairly ridiculous things.

 **VC:** Your story wasn’t exactly—

 **MH:** No, I don’t think I sounded any more reasonable, but I was right. I told you, what was it? _The Fade is killing people_. And I still believe it. I know I’m right.

_I am right._

She said it with such conviction when she cornered me at Corff’s bar, and it was that same conviction which made people stand up and follow this story, which allowed her to see her investigation through to the end, no matter who—or _what_ —stood in her way.

 **MH:** I hadn’t come to talk to you, that day. I was there to see Aveline.

Aveline Vallen was, then, a recruit of the Kirkwall City Guard. One small fish in a big sea of the supposedly more respectable side of Kirkwall. But Hawke trusted her.

 **MH:** My sister Bethany [Hawke], she was in the Circle. I managed to convince the sisters to let her out for Mother’s funeral. I was expecting a hug, tears…[Hesitates] For her to be far skinnier than when she went in. What I wasn’t expecting was the nervous glances she kept shooting at the people around us.

 **VT:** Sunshine wasn’t the nervous type then?

Sunshine, a name I gave Bethany the first time I met her, is easy to understand if you ever have the pleasure of meeting the girl. She’s pure happiness in a human body; but, no, Hawke sits across from me, shaking her head. Nervous, she wasn’t.

 **MH:** Some point during one of the longer chants, Bethany pretended to sing along—she knows all the words, you know? But what she told me was three other women in her Circle had died the _exact same way_ Mother had, the nights after Mother did. No one knew about it.

And why would they? What was one less mage in the Kirkwall Circle? This sort of restriction of information to the public is normal, according to a source who prefers to remain anonymous.

 **Anonymous:** They hate us. The Circles are holding cells for their convenience because we are just that; an _inconvenience_. There are deaths dressed up in ritual to make it look official, but when we die, the public never hears about it, no. We are dead the moment we enter that place.

A morbid description, but when was the last time you read the obituary of a Circle Mage? And it’s not just death records the Circle keeps close to their chest.

 **VT:** Do you think we would have discovered the Daybreak Butcher during those first instances, had we been granted more information by the Circle?

 **MH:** Is that even a question? Yes, yes, of course. Undoubtedly, we were blocked at every turn by the Circle and, I would suspect, the Chantry itself.

A lot of this keeps coming back to the Circle, magic, the Chantry, but what does that have to do with the Fade? Or how it can murder thirteen people? As a dwarf, I never really understood the Fade. I still have trouble sometimes, when Marian rolls over in the morning, creases on her face from the pillow, and tries to explain a story she’s seen behind her eyes as though she’d just read it from one of my books.

Sometimes I’m not sure how it can be real.

 **Merrill:** You want me to talk about the Fade? Gosh…it’s full of spirits and power and you can walk for miles in the same spot. Great exercise! Time and space are so different. I suppose if someone wanted to commit the perfect crime, it would be there. I didn’t know how. It’s why Hawke asked for my help, to figure that out.

This is Merrill, a Dalish Elven Mage. But, of course, you know her as the Daybreak Butcher.

9:37 Dragon, Cloudreach, Merrill was found in the alleyway outside of the home of the Starkhaven ambassador, Prince Sebastian Vael; the last of the thirteen victims. The Viscount acted quickly, orders went to the Kirkwall Guard and the Templars: it didn’t matter who got their hands on Merrill first, so long as she was contained.

And, like that, the killer who had plagued Kirkwall for years was caught.

Many, including the Hawke siblings and even the woman who put the chains around her wrists, were not so sure.

 **Aveline Vallen:** No, I don’t think she did it. But I didn’t have much of a choice _but_ to arrest her with the overwhelming amount of evidence against her.

 **VT:** What was it you had, at the time?

 **AV:** We knew people were dying in the Fade, which told us it was a demon or a mage. It was only humans. There was a compelling case to be made against a Dalish elf, especially one who openly practiced blood magic. That she was discovered at the scene of one of the crimes, and that the last of these extended this case to Starkhaven…it doesn’t look good.

 **VT:** But you don’t believe she did it.

 **AV:** Absolutely not, I’ve been clear about that from the beginning. The law requires that I arrest her, but we have just as much if not more evidence that says she could not have committed these crimes. I have a very strong gut feeling that we still have a killer on the loose and, until _that_ person is found I will be working with Hawke to find out the truth.

Not everyone on the force feels the same, but when asked to put their thoughts to paper they could not clarify beyond their own gut feelings and the fact that they found Merrill, ‘creepy’ and ‘too elfy’.

 **Merrill:** They don’t like elves very much…[Hesitates] I think. I don’t see a lot of humans or dwarves or any non-elves in our part of town. It’s not Darktown but it’s not nice either. I think they like keeping us where they know they can see us.

Much like the Circle, the Alienage of Kirkwall feels like a holding cell disguised as an inclusive community. It’s easy to peek through the cracks the more you spend time there.

Let’s go back to what Merrill told us: Hawke asked her for help.

 **MH:** All the City Guard _knew_ I was working with Merrill from the beginning. And you, and a few others.

When Marian says ‘working with’, she means _investigating._ A privately funded enterprise dedicated to solving crimes that are seemingly unsolvable or, otherwise, overlooked in Kirkwall. To do so she claims to employ a number of anonymous contacts from sailors arriving in the docks to those the Viscount’s employ.

 **MH** : _I_ sent Merrill to the Starkhaven house. One of my contacts in the Chantry overheard the Prince praying about day terrors. That he was seeing things that ought not be there, he was afraid, and hoped the Maker would protect him. Thought it was worth checking out. You know, just in case Andraste was busy.

This is all public record. The Fade Murders have been considered solved and, as of six months ago, the public now has a face to attach to the Daybreak Butcher. A blood mage, Dalish elf, with no blood relations to speak for her. A neat bow to tie things up.

The problem with that ending, the one you're being sold by the other papers, is that the murders _didn't stop at thirteen_.

Oh I know what you're thinking; murders happen every day. But we all know this MO.

_[This section appears smudged. You can make out a few words: ‘sleep’, ‘fingernails’, and ‘cut along the--’. Staring at any one of them for too long gives you a headache.]_

Sure, we haven't seen that sort of death in Kirkwall since Merrill was put in the cells of its finest stone work dungeons...

But Ostwick has.

I sent a junior reporter, Ashkaari, with Marian to Ostwick to keep up with the situation as it developed. Here is what they found.

* * *

**_Excerpts from a series of letters in response to the Fade Murders of Ostwick, penned by Ashkaari and Marian Hawke:_ **

Everything’s cleaner here. There is a wheelhouse where they turn the saltwater to fresh. I never thought I’d miss how filthy our city is. But it’s an honest filth.  
The citizens remember the name ‘Amell’, but they look at Ashkaari with distrust. They should understand they have bigger problems on their hands than a stray Qunari. Still, I’ve examined two of the bodies that the mother tipped us off about. The Chantry, unsurprisingly, has barred access to the third, so we’ve had to [REDACTED].  
Yours,  
Marian

  
So far, three deaths, victims unrelated. The first, at the human’s place of prayer; a sister, in the gardens. The body at the large house was a diplomat from Tevinter. The third has captured Marian’s fascination for its location if nothing else. The waterwheel, where the mother found her son’s body, glows with the color of the Fade.  
I have enclosed pictures of the scenes, as best as my hand can replicate them.  
-Ashkaari  
_[Attached are three sketches of crime scenes, rendered in charcoal]_

As we suspected, the killings bear a striking resemblance to those in Kirkwall. I would say that the only difference is the increase in intensity. The boy found under the waterwheel is the most disturbing, but he’s told us the most, as his mother refused to allow the guards to move, bury, or burn him. She is rich enough, it seems. Each day, at five bells, his body is surrounded, so briefly, by the green hue I see when I sleep.  
We’ve kept away from it so far. Tomorrow I’ll approach it and see what I find. I have a great feeling it will be something to exonerate our friend.  
Marian

* * *

This was the last letter I received from my wife. Ashkaari returned a week ago with a first-hand account of what followed.

 **Ashkaari** : I wasn’t there when she decided to get closer to the body, at five bells. I knew her plan, but I was waylaid by the diplomat’s sister, who was sure he’d been poisoned by the Daybreak Butcher--slow-acting, she said, but she had no proof to offer. So I was late, missed the green magic around the waterwheel.

 **VT:** What _did_ you see?

 **ASH:** Not a lot. It was obvious Hawke had been there. She’d left her chest plate. It had a cracking big line down the middle, like someone had tried to burn it in half. But it hadn’t been ripped off; the straps were removed and it had been placed on the ground, sheltering her necklace, with her wedding ring. And, wherever she’d gone, or been taken, her weapons were with her. There wasn’t a trail, but I did search the hills nearby until nightfall, when I waited for her at the inn.

 **VT:** When did you see Marian again?

 **ASH:** See is...that’s tricky. I didn’t _really_ see her.

 **VT:** Tell me what you know.

 **ASH:** I stayed near where she’d disappeared. Waited til the Fadestuffs came back and…[Hesitates] I _heard_ her. Screamin’--sorry, Mister Tethras--not hurt or anything. Battle-mad. So I know she’s in whatever that stuff is, and she’s fighting.

You heard it here, folks. The woman they have in prison, accused for the murders of thirteen men, women, and children, is _not_ the Daybreak Butcher. My wife is risking her life to prove this so, please, if you take nothing else away from this, remember _that_.

You all know me. By the time you’re finished reading this I should be in Ostwick, with a few others. And when Hawke and I return, we expect to be greeted by the usual pomp and circumstance, and a very friendly, Dalish elf named Merrill.

Reporting from the city of Kirkwall, I’m Varric Tethras.

_[Want to read more like this? Ask your local vendor about Varric Tethras’ crime series, Hard in Hightown!]_

**Author's Note:**

> ETA 12/29: I had a lot of fun with this pinch hit because, if you can't tell, I've been listening to A LOT of true crime podcasts lately. Also I just got finished rewatching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, so seeing 'Journalist and Detective' was fantastic. I hope you enjoyed it, and all my best for the coming year!


End file.
